From the article: When it comes to salmon, the questions of organic versus conventional and wild versus farmed matter less than whether the fish is frozen or fresh. In many cases, fresh salmon has about twice the environmental impact as frozen salmon.

When you fly 1000 pounds of salmon to NY, you fly 1000 pounds of salmon to NY. What difference does it make if it's fresh of frozen? Starving to death the 3 people who came up with this article would be good for the environment.

Actually there are good reasons not to eat certain fish, yellow fin tuna for example. Our oceans are on their way to becoming an echological disaster area. Some species of fish are more sustainable than others. Perhaps in a few years, we will be able to grow them in a lab and not have to fish at all. But whatever the reasons, the global warming religion is not one of them. Sadly if the world hadn't gone mad for the global warming cult, it might have the will to do something about real environmental problems like over fishing.

Reminds me of that scene in the Goode Family, where the mom goes to Whole Foods and there is a giant markey listing "Good" and "Bad" things. As she looks at the sign, "Farm Raised Catfish" toggles back and forth between the two lists.

Really, environmentalism has become the capricious obsession of a few kooks. Unfortunately, they have convinced a good part of the world that we need to take them seriously.

When you fly 1000 pounds of salmon to NY, you fly 1000 pounds of salmon to NY. What difference does it make if it's fresh of frozen?

When the fish is frozen there is no need for speed. They can be leisurely shipped via truck or train. These methods use much less energy than flying. Flash frozen fish is just as good as fresh. Actually it is sometimes better because who knows how long that fish fillet has been laying around.

When we caught fish, especially sea bass, I would freeze the fish in a container of water. Fish in ice instead of ON ice. The quality was fine.

The dislike of fish from people in the Midwest and other areas that didn't have local access was due to the smell of decomposing fish. Frozen fish don't decompose and don't smell ....at all.

All that being said. Screw these people who want to micro manage our lives based on a mythology and religion of Global Warming.

It is -8 degrees right now. I've been cold and I've been warm. Warm is better!!! It is easier to cool off than it is to get warmer and takes a lot less energy to get cool.

In fact, being vegetarian in the winter is environmentally irresponsible. My ancestors fattened pigs on scraps through the spring and summer, to slaughter, salt, and smoke in the fall. A daily ration of a slice of fatty salami between two slices of whole grain bread kept you alive all winter, accompanied as it was with vitamin-rich sauerkraut and applesauce. Wood being a renewable resource, no excess carbon was put into the atmosphere.

That is an excellent point. I can't wait to confront the next enviro vegan I meet. Unless you are canning and pickeling local produce all summer, you are not being very green being a vegan. And I doubt you could live on nothing but canned vegitables without some kind of smoked meat to go with it.

"Data on the ingredients of the Polymeal were taken from the literature. The evidence based recipe included wine, fish, dark chocolate, fruits, vegetables, garlic, and almonds. Data from the Framingham heart study and the Framingham offspring study were used to build life tables to model the benefits of the Polymeal in the general population from age 50, assuming multiplicative correlations.

Conclusion: The Polymeal promises to be an effective, non-pharmacological, safe, cheap, and tasty alternative to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and increase life expectancy in the general population."

John -- The problem with being a medieval vegan in Northern Europe would have been getting enough calories.

Vegetarians would have fared better, because turning milk into cheese was another way to store food for the winter. But dairying is much less efficient, because many more cows than pigs must be kept alive through the winter, requiring storage of hay and grain. And male calves are slaughtered and eaten fairly young.

Dairying is very expensive and hard. Pigs also have the advantage of eating garbage and keeping the place clean. They are wonderfully efficient stock animals that way. Chickens are another good animal for getting through the winter. They eat grain, produce eggs, are cheap, bread prodigously, and are good to eat. The bottomline is that there is no way to be a vegitarian without the luxuries of modern life.

I live in a nice New England town famous for its political correctness, so of course we have a "local, sustainable agriculture restaurant." It's a great philosophy for restaurants in the Inland Kingdom, where the local/sustainable idea was born. In New England, in winter, it results in menus featuring roasted potatoes, served on a bed of mashed potatoes, with turnips.

The local Green and his girlfriend - who has a surprisingly, sensationally good figure, not that I notice that kind of thing - have terraced the canyon walls and capture rainwater through intricate tubes and have a 'solar greenhouse' (which I guess is to be contradistinguished from 'starlight greenhouses' and 'lunar greenhouses) and collect (for compost) the whole neighborhood's veggie scraps and dog shit.

They can't or won't make it without meat, not through a Colorado winter, but of course they aren't going to actually kill something. I mean, it would be ... killing. So unBouldroid. Well, I'm trying to do my part. I'm genuinely grateful for someone who will deal with dog shit, and doesn't offer me the vegetables he uses to edulcorate it. So my part is teaching him how to gut and skin a deer. God! Roadkill is really not much fun to work on. Hydrostatic shock may be poppycock in gunshot wound ballistics, but it sure seems to be there when you deploy 4500 lbs of SUV moving 60fps against a 100-lb doe. Momentum rules, pool tables to interstates. Downcanyon roars the Mercury Mountaineer, out minces the deer. Pop! Denounce! goes the Green, looking at receding taillights from the ecoscrotewagon. Cringe! goes the Green, looking at the ruptured buck, and brings out a single dull stainless paring knife, still faintly green with the phloem of countless vegetables it has gored.

This being a Locavore. You Althouse commenters think it's a bed of roses to turn away from frozen fish and plunge your hands into dog shit and deer guts? It's Not Easy.

wv joinker - wanker with strong social needs to identify with those who hold the correct ideologies

This being a Locavore. You Althouse commenters think it's a bed of roses to turn away from frozen fish and plunge your hands into dog shit and deer guts? It's Not Easy.

Anyone using dog shit for compost or fertilizer is out of their mind!! Same thing for using any meat scraps, fat or other proteins in the compost pile.

Oh.... and I know how to gut, skin and hang a deer. (I don't like to do it so I don't hunt anymore and trade for venison with friends. Clean geese, ducks, pheasants, stripped bass and sturgeon too. Somehow those aren't as bad as a mammal. And you are right it isn't easy or all that much fun.

I refuse to raise and kill the bunny rabbits and buy them already dressed from the neighbor. Rabbits are too much like pets. Same thing for goats.

We have here another earth saving gesture to stop using fuels. The sailing ships were all that man needed until 1900. This shipping using oil powered container ships and trains is EVIL. And why does any fool believe that? It has Zero truth. I say, " Fuck liars".

I don't like fish, so don't care about fresh or frozen, but do think this entire thing is silly. The increasingly hysterical labeling of anything disagreeable as "pollution" and destructive to the human race is absurd.

To add to that, I think this is part and parcel with criminalizing and increasing number of behaviors until everyone is a criminal. One you label a behavior evil, criminalizing it is easy.

It would be nice to say this is some fascist conspiracy because we could then kill it. Instead, it's the gestalt of actions taken by highly incompetent bureaucrats, politicians and single issue proponents who care only that they are getting their way.

All joking aside, there IS a serious effort in the Greenie Movement and the Left to guilt-trip, then tax, then strictly regulate "excess" meat, fish, and dairy consumption as "unsustainable, planet-unfriendly" behaviors.

My thoughts are that there IS growing "Green Fatigue". Not just here, but in Europe - where Greenies stages days of "outrage" against plans for new nuke power plants and were confronted by people saying "10 years of subsidized Blessed Solar and Wondrous Wind projects and new taxes and regulations on consumption has left us with doubled electric costs, enslaved to Russian natural gas, and less jobs and less standard of living....so piss off", The anti-nuke demonstations were mocked and fizzled out.

It's one thing for a Green to nag society how wonderful it would be if we all eat pesticide, inorganic fertilizer free lentils and turnips with a modest dash only of organic sun-dried sea salt. It is another for a power-intoxicated Green Stalinist to demand laws telling others they must largely discontinue eating a range of things and be forced to eat "better for them food" like organic lentils and turnips served with wholesome non-GM grain and "carbon-neutral seasonings."

I believe right now the Green-Left-AGW-Vegan crowd is saturated with conviction that the world is theirs, they are right, and they can drip hubris as much as they like. And as long as the elites, the NYC and London financiers back them...it doesn't matter what the masses think.

When I was a child, fresh salmon was unheard of. We had lots of canned salmon or tuna. Fresh fish was only when we caught it ourselves or very rarely at the meat market. Forget the regular grocery store.

ricpic said..."You want that authentic oily fishy taste? Eat bluefish, which is local (at least on the east coast) and doesn't have to be flown. But frankly, I could do the rest of my life without that taste."

Try grilling the Bluefish on a very hot gas or charcoal fire with a little onion on the top. Cook it long enough to let it char completely on each side. The oil flares up, giving the fish flavor but it's not oily in texture or taste. This also works with Mackerel.

Frozen fish -- you mean those disgusting, tasteless rectangles of cod that come in a box? Anybody have a good recipe that makes that stuff worth eating? Actually I've been eating lots of canned sardines for the Vitamin D & Omega 3s -- where does that put me on the environmental propriety scale?

We used to have a smoked meat and smoked fish wholesale business for a few years from 1994 to 2000. It was a S Corp venture with another guy. This was at the same time as my hubby had/still has his plumbing business and I my financial advisory business. We were needless to say sort of busy.

In addition to smoked hot spicy hickory chicken wings (a big hit), smoked buffalo roasts etc our specialty was hot smoked(as opposed to cold smoke process) rainbow trout fillets. We would buy 200 pounds of trout fresh! from the hatchery about once or twice a week. The fish were screened at the hatchery for size of 1 1/2 pounds live weight.

My husband had the "cut and gut" detail. The fish guts and heads went to a local farmer who made fertilizer out of it. We sold to some upper end specialty grocery stores in the Bay Area and many restaurants who used our product as entrees and in appetizers.

Some years ago I heard a piece on NPR about farmed salmon. Some Holier than Thou type said we used to get salmon only during the season and that's the way it should be. This is of the same frame of mind. Why should people in Kansas or Oklahoma ever get salmon at all? Why should any of us who don't live on the coast ever get fresh fish? We can eat beef, until we can't get that any more because of (gasp) methane.

I made a video about sustainable fish, how to make sense of all the contradictory advice, etc. Unlike most such things, it's not out to make you feel guilty, but is pretty down to earth (partly because it follows a fish salesman around and talks about where sustainability fits into his business). Anyway, check it out:

The whole point of the carbon footprint brouhaha is for it to act as a root password that allows people like Astrid Scholz, Ulf Sonesson, and Peter Tyedmers to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. I don't know why anyone would be surprised that this extends to the type of fish we eat, too.

it is laughable, you people think it matters what the current good food and bad food is... even if everyone wholeheartedly followed the environmentalists' recommendations, in 20 years they will still be issuing these stupid edicts, except by that time it will be something like: "eating the synthetic soy and wheat grass cube is worse for the environment than the synthetic algae and seaweed cube.

There is much more going on here than fresh versus frozen fish. The fresh fish is bad for the environment is part of an ongoing marketing campaign waged by the subsidized commercial fishing industry against the encroaching fish farms. Fish farms are able to deliver product at any time of the year- on demand- fresh. High seas fisheries cannot. The claim of a few years ago that farmed salmon contains PCB and other contaminants is an earlier incarnation of this battle. There is generally more at stake than the moral high ground.

I like my fish fresh and will tolerate frozen. The best fish I ever ate was a brook trout caught at 11:30am and pan fried at 12 noon in bacon grease. The brookie was caught on Lake Mooselookmeguntic in the Rangeley Region of Maine. I probably remember it so well because it was my honeymoon!

As to the op-ed in the NYT, will someone please enlighten me, an omnivore heathen, to what exactly a "vice president for knowledge systems" does? That was the title of one of the op-ed's authors.

This may have been mentioned but a lot of the fresh fish is actually flown in the cargo holds of commercial airliners, thus giving a double usage to that flight. For instance, the Roy's location in Atlanta has their fish flown in from Hawaii on the daily Delta run from Honolulu. So there is no additional cost environmentally. More importantly, I refuse to be lectured by scolds that fly all over the world to meet and greaat one another. When they start using telepresence, I may begin to take them slightly seriously. Carbon credits are a scam.